Our first egg!!

I went out to check on the chickens this afternoon.  I just had a feeling I should go out and see what they were up to and peek into the nesting boxes.  Our neighbor's chickens have been laying eggs for about a month now and they are about a month older than ours.  So we kept thinking, any day now...

I looked in the nesting boxes but all I saw were the glass eggs we put in to give them an idea what the nests were for.  I was feeling disheartened when I stepped into the run.  I knelt down to take some pictures of the girls when something caught my eye.  There's a corner of the coop where the birds like to dust bathe and my husband has been putting things there, like paver stones, to discourage them because they are digging out the ground by the fencing.  Right by the paver, there was what looked like a rather large stone but when I came closer I saw, it was our first egg!  

It's huge!  When I washed it, I saw that it was an Ameraucana egg, light green in color.  It was still warm when I picked it up.  All the boys came running when I said I found an egg.  They each held it reverently, smelling it, rolling it around in their hands, looking at all it's markings...

Many of you know that my neighbor and I have a friendly competition going on with our chickens.  First it was the chicken coops in her post titled: A tale of 2 coops.  Rita put up another post on her blog recently titled: The tale of 2 coops: a new generation of egg layers.  It was about her newly laying chickens and how hers beat ours out the gates with the first egg.  I think we have hers beat in terms of size though.  Check out our first egg next to one of her first; it's almost twice the size!  

What an exciting day!  I'll let everyone know when they are laying enough that we can start selling.  Should be soon.